Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

Jae-Sik was wondering what favor Gun-Ho had in his mind to ask him.

He asked, “A personal favor? Sure.”

“By the next week, you will be done with the opening ceremony and moving to a new place, so you will have spare time, right?”

“Yeah. I won’t have anything urgent that I will need to take care of.”

“I want you to buy condos in Huaxi Huayuan with your name.”

“With my name? Just like we did with the farmland in Seonghwan Town?”

Jae-Sik swallowed heavily and put his smartphone to his ear closely, to carefully listen to what Gun-Ho would say.

‘Gun-Ho wants to start his real estate investment again here in this city! He is extremely wealthy and has amazing insight and intuition in making money. Korea’s real estate market is heavily regulated by the government while China isn’t just yet. I’m certain that Gun-Ho is attracted to the real estate market in China.

Of course. I heard that Gun-Ho made a lot of money by buying and selling a condo in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province during his very first stay in China. No one knows about how he made his seed money, but Gun-Ho surely had his seed money to use in his investment. I can’t make my own investment even now because I have no seed money to invest with.

Gun-Ho bought me a condo in Juan Town after using my name in the real estate transaction for the GH Logistics’ land in Seonghwan Town. I believe that he will give me something in return this time too.’

Jae-Sik was still waiting for Gun-Ho’s next words. But Gun-Ho seemed to take his time before saying anything.

Jae-Sik pushed him a bit by saying, “I’m listening. Tell me.”

“Your name is listed in the joint venture’s business registration with Antang City, so, I believe that you can buy a real property there. Since we now know the price of condos and the cost to complete the interior, we won’t get ripped off. I want you to purchase condos quietly without telling anyone. You opened your personal bank account with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. I had to open it in order to receive my salary.”

“I will send you the money for making a contract to that account.”

“Okay. I will text you with my account number.”

“I want five condos, not just one.”

“Did you say five?”

“They still have condos available, right?”

“I think so since their sales office is still open, selling brand new condos.”

“The business registration shows that the size of investment for the joint venture is 50 million dollars. It must be a huge amount of money that is rarely seen in a small city like Antang City. You can just tell them that you will use the condos for the workers when you make a purchase contract, and I think they won’t raise any issue up to five condos. Talk with Fang Di Chan (real estate agents) about it.”

“Okay, I will do that.”

“We are not rushing or anything for this transaction, so take your time. We can do it next week or the following week.”

“If I receive funds to my personal bank account, not to the company’s business account, don’t I have to file a report with the foreign exchange authority about it?”

“You don’t have to worry about it.”

“Okay.”

After getting off the phone with Jae-Sik Moon, Gun-Ho quietly did his math.

‘A condo in Huaxi Huayuan is 164 million won. If I purchase five of them, it will cost me 820 million won. I can’t resell them right away, so I will have to rent them out… Let’s see… maybe for three years.

I can rent out all of the five condos, and let Jae-Sik Moon manage them. Since they are brand new condos, I guess I can ask 3,000 Yuan for a monthly rent for each condo. If I successfully rent them all, I will make 15,000 Yuan per month as rental income. After three years, I believe I can sell them at least for 200 million won per each. Even if it’s in China, the house price in a rich area will go up. It’s a proven fact. Unless there happens a financial crisis like the previous IMF crisis in Korea, the house price in a wealthy neighborhood will definitely go up.’

Gun-Ho smiled as he expected to make some money in Antang City.

It was Thursday.

Gun-Ho went to work in GH Mobile in Jiksan Town. He first stopped by the construction site for their new production site B. The building was almost constructed leaving some final touch-ups. Gun-Ho could see some finishing materials piled up inside the building. When Jong-Suk heard that Gun-Ho was there, he quickly came out to see Gun-Ho.

“It’s almost done, huh?”

“Yeah, they will finish it by next week. We need this new production site open as soon as possible. The production workers are working overnight these days. Even though they get paid for the overtime, it’s hard for them.”

“You seemed to lose some weight. How come your weight changes constantly up and down?”

“I’ve been very busy these days. I have a hectic work schedule, and I have been studying for an exam in college. I’m also studying for TOEIC too.”

“What about the English class? Did we resume the morning English class with the native English teacher?”

“Yeah. I think my English listening has improved. Thanks to the morning class at work.”

“What are those over there? I haven’t seen them before.”

“Oh, they are assembled products for Chrysler. We are getting parts from four different companies and assemble them at our assembly department before shipping them to Chrysler. It has been only a week since we started working with these parts.”

“Are we getting enough product orders?”

“Quite a lot, I would say. The thing is that since the four companies supply their products to us, we have to conduct quality control on their products, not to mention to send people to their factories to inspect them. It’s a lot of work. Our personnel from the quality control team visited one of the companies today for an inspection. We need to make sure that they are not sending us defective products, so our assembled final products wouldn’t be defective.”

“Hmm, I see.”

“President Song wants to increase the number of workers at the quality team. I believe that he already posted the job opening on WorkNet.”

“So, we are hiring more workers, huh?”

“Yeah. According to President Song, we will have more than 500 workers in total by the end of this year.”

“500? I guess we need a larger company cafeteria.”

“We have one more cooking lady in the kitchen now. Since we are working overnight these days, we needed one more cooking lady. The cafeteria is serving quality food as the nutritionist recommends, day and night.”

“You sound like having busy days lately. If you want to be more comfortable by having some spare time at work, you should train a few workers to take mid-management positions and share your workload with them.”

“Speaking of which, once the production site B is completed, I’m going to place a manager at each production site, like the first manager at Production A, and the second manager at Production B.”

“We only have one manager right now. Are you going to hire someone?”

“No, that wouldn’t be necessary. We have an assistant manager who has been working here for almost four years. I’m going to place him at an acting manager position for now.”

“You shouldn’t consider only the number of years that the person has been working with the company, in placing someone at a specific position. You should also consider if you would actually feel comfortable working with that person.”

“I do like him. He is a lot older than me, so I treat him like my older brother, and he likes that a lot. Huh? That’s him. The one walking over there.”

“Call him.”

“Bro! Bro!”

Jong-Suk Park indeed was calling the person a brother, who was working with a position lower than his. A man, who looked like he was in his mid-40s, came to Gun-Ho and Jong-Suk Park. Gun-Ho had seen him around before. The man looked surprised when he recognized Gun-Ho, and he gave a bow to him showing his respect.

Gun-Ho asked, “Which department are you working at now?”

“I’m an assistant manager at the production site A. I’m primarily managing the cutting and testing team.”

“Our production plant manager here spoke highly of you that you work hard, and you are good at managing workers. You were walking by just in time, so I asked him to call you, so I could meet you in person.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The assistant manager blushed and gave a deep bow to Gun-Ho.